Missing Sailor Turns Up in East : Navy Investigating Petty Officer’s 8-Month Absence

A Ventura County sailor whose mysterious absence from her ship prompted an eight-month search has turned up on the East Coast, a Navy spokesman said Thursday.

But where and how Petty Officer Tambra Leigh Morrison had spent her time since she vanished Aug. 3, 1986, from the Port Hueneme-based missile-testing platform Norton Sound are among questions Navy investigators still want answered.

The Navy said an “internal” and “routine” investigation is under way as Morrison remains confined to the barracks of the Norfolk, Va., naval base.

“We are treating this as a normal unauthorized absence,” said Chief Petty Officer Paul Versailles, assistant public affairs officer of the Naval Surface Force Pacific Fleet in San Diego. Asked if there is concern that the 22-year-old Morrison was involved in any espionage, he said: “I have no indication that anything like that is involved.”

Morrison, accompanied by her mother, Sandra Hill of Statesville, N.C., surrendered to base authorities in Norfolk on April 13.

Versailles said he did not know what prompted her return to the Navy. Her relatives could not be reached to help shed light on where Morrison might have been since she vanished under mysterious circumstances last Aug. 3.

A member of the Norton Sound’s telephone repair crew, she had indicated to shipmates that she intended to return the following day to the vessel docked at Port Hueneme in Ventura County.

“As she was leaving the ship she waved to a friend on board and said ‘See you tomorrow,’ ” Versailles said last August.

“She was an outstanding sailor,” Versailles said. “The day she disappeared she was in good spirits. . . . There was nothing to indicate that anything was amiss in her life.

“She was a very happy person, looking foward to her future assignments. People with that attitude don’t normally walk away from the Navy.”

Morrison, then 21, and her father, a Buena Park engineer, were very close, friends of the family said. It was not known whether Morrison had been in touch with her father during the last eight months.

Morrison left bank records and other personal possessions in her ship bunk, apparently having departed with only her car and the clothes she was wearing.

Concern over her fate mounted after authorities learned in November that her blue, two-door Honda Civic had been found abandoned several weeks earlier at a truck stop in Corning, Calif., off Interstate 5 between Sacramento and Red Bluff. Shipmates from the Norton Sound, which has since been decommissioned, conducted their own search. Morrison also had been sought by her father and family friends who went to the media to seek the public’s help in finding her. And the Navy’s search for Morrison had remained active since last summer, Versailles said.

Whether Morrison contacted relatives or friends between September and April 13 remained unclear Thursday. Versailles said that information is categorized as “investigative” information that would not be released while the inquiry was continuing.

Morrison will be held at the base until an examination of her unauthorized absence is completed and “any disciplinary action that might arise from her eight-month absence” is taken, Versailles said.

If Morrison is charged with unauthorized absence or desertion, Versailles said, she will be subject to a court-martial.

“The Uniform Code of Military Justice is such that, in peace time, either offense will be punished as a court martial directs,” Versailles said Thurday.

“The maximum” penalty “would include some confinement, reduction in pay grade, loss of pay and or a fine,” Versailles said. “A general rule of thumb,” he added, “is that she wouldn’t be confined more than the time she was absent,” which was eight months.